Professional tooth whitening is performed in a dental office and generally includes the application of high concentration peroxides with or without light activation. Home use peroxides are regulated substances that have concentrations that are generally substantially lower than those used in professional settings. Numerous products are available in the market place including Zoom!®, BriteSmile®, LaserSmile®, Beyond®, Opalescence®, Lumibrite®, LumaCool®, NUPRO®, and Niveous®. The concentration of the oxidizing agent defines the rate of whitening, and therefore home treatments have suffered from significantly lower whitening rates than that available in professional dental treatments. The present disclosure is focused on the development of a home dental product which accelerates the whitening rate by using photocatalytic methods to increase the concentrations of oxidizing agents at the time of treatment.
There is considerable literature describing teeth brightening technology including U.S. Pat. No. 5,702,250 (December 1997) to Kipke, U.S. Pat. No. 6,155,832 (December 2000) to Wiesel; U.S. Pat. No. 6,162,055 (December 2000) to Montgomery et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,616,451 (September 2003) to Rizolu et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,733,290 (May 2004) to West et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,627 (June 2004) to Lin, U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,363 (August 2004) to Eguchi et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,902,397 (June 2005) to Farrell et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,004,756 (February 2006) to Andersen, U.S. Pat. No. 7,086,862 (August 2006) to Craig, U.S. Pat. No. 7,144,249 (December 2006) to Rizoin et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,160,111 (January 2007) to Baughman, U.S. Pat. No. 7,223,270 (May 2007) to Altshuler et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,250,155 (July 2007) to Yamaguchi et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 8,029,278 (October 2011) to Levine. Additional literature includes United States Patent Publications 2004/0193236 (September 2004), 2005/0053898 (March 2005), 2005/0064370 (March 2005), 2005/0074717 (April 2005), 2005/0158687 (July 2005), 2005/0172429 (August 2005), 2005/0202363 (September 2005), 2005/0231983 (October 2005), 2006/0019214 (January 2006), 2006/0141422 (June 2006), 2006/0194164 (August 2006), 2006/0257822 (November 2006), 2007/0003905 (January 2007), 2007/0015112 (January 2007), and 2007/0020584 (January 2007).
International Patent Application PCT/US14/34598 filed Apr. 18, 2014 and entitled “LIGHT ACTIVATED TOOTH WHITENING SYSTEM, COMPOSITION AND DELIVERY METHOD,” and commonly assigned with the present application, describes certain oxidizing formulations and is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.